The sky above me was black. Not with clouds—just code. White lines flickered through it like broken programming. The world had rebuilt itself, but this time, it didn't know what it was doing.
I stood alone in the ash of a story I didn't belong to. No voices. No whispers. No characters.
Until my vision blurred.
A flash of light hit me between the eyes. Pain followed—sharp, direct, like a switch had been flipped in my skull. My knees hit the ground, and the world around me cracked into memory.
It wasn't a dream.
It was a file.
I saw figures in shadows—people arguing, voices cutting through static.
"She's crossing out characters mid-read."
"She shouldn't even exist. She wasn't requested."
"You want her erased?"
"Erase her. Immediately. Before she reaches the reader."
The image pulled back, and I saw myself.
Not now. Not this version of me.
A past version, suspended in glass. Eyes closed. Body still. A code signature running through my veins.
My first creation.
My last deletion.
The file ended with the sound of a heartbeat and the words: Auto-Erasure Failed.
I opened my eyes.
Blood was running from my nose.
This time, it didn't disappear.
This time, I could feel the pain.
My breathing was slow, but focused. I stood up, wiped my face, and looked at the message now glowing across my forearm:
> SYSTEM WARNING: FORCED DELETION IN – 00:03:12
The countdown was live.
They had found me again.
I wasn't afraid. I was angry.
I glanced down at the half-burnt page I'd stolen from the last world. It still pulsed with static, unstable, but usable.
If they were sending a wipe, I needed to hide inside a living story.
And I needed to choose fast.
I swiped my hand through the air, forcing a rip through the fabric of the code. Story indexes flooded my sight—romance, sci-fi, cultivation, academy life, survival horror.
One pulsed brighter than the others.
"Rise of the Last Dungeon King – Popular Rank #4"
Perfect.
I stepped into the page and dropped into the center of a cracked stone arena.
Dust exploded under my feet. Around me, characters trained with glowing swords and stats over their heads. None of them saw me appear—they weren't coded to notice me.
I blended in.
For now.
I made myself a background NPC. No rank. No dialogue. No name.
The system wouldn't detect me unless I triggered the plot. I lowered my head and moved through the arena like a shadow.
But someone noticed.
A boy stood watching me from across the field. Red hair. Heavy armor. His sword glowed with a pale-blue core.
His eyes narrowed.
"You," he said. "You're the girl from my dream."
I froze.
That wasn't possible. Dreams weren't real in system-coded stories. They couldn't think outside their script. They weren't built to remember anything beyond the present.
"You were standing in a burning library," he added. "You looked at me and said… stop reading."
I didn't speak. If I did, the system might lock on.
But it was too late.
The countdown hit zero.
A black pulse exploded across the arena. Everyone except me and the red-haired boy froze in time.
From above, a new figure dropped.
He was clean. Unarmed. Blank-faced. No name. No presence. But he radiated deletion code so strong the arena warped.
A Hunter.
System-deployed, silent, soulless.
He didn't introduce himself. He didn't question me. He just ran at me full force.
I moved.
His fist shattered the stone behind me. I ducked low, twisted sideways, and lashed out. He caught my arm and threw me thirty meters across the field. I hit hard—but I didn't break.
Not this time.
The text in my eyes flickered like lightning. I pushed off the ground and forced my fingers into the arena code.
[Activate Rewrite: 5 Seconds]
The world around me rewound—just five seconds.
This time, I dodged before his attack even started. I grabbed his collar, twisted behind him, and rammed his face into the ground with a surge of energy I didn't recognize.
He didn't speak. He didn't groan. But when I looked down, I saw the crack in his spine. He wasn't bleeding. He was unraveling.
Line by line.
The moment he vanished, the code he carried flowed into me. Words ran across my arms again.
Ability Unlocked: Rewrite Field – Cooldown: 180 seconds
Progress: Hunter Neutralized
Reward: Memory Thread Accessed
The ground broke beneath me again, but this time it wasn't a collapse—it was a transition.
I landed on a white floor in a narrow space. The books were gone.
Only one thing hovered in front of me now.
A file. Glowing gold.
READER ZERO – TRACKING FILE – PARTIAL UNLOCK
My pulse slowed. The lights from the file pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat. No fake tension. No illusion.
This was real.
As I reached for the file, the air shifted—quiet, but heavier than before. There was a sound, subtle yet clear. A heartbeat. Not mine. It didn't match my rhythm. It came from the other side of the screen.
Yours.
The moment my fingers touched the glowing folder, everything around me dimmed. The world blinked out. No sparks. No explosion. Just complete blackness.
Then one word lit up in the center of the dark.
Almost.
I didn't laugh. I didn't speak. But I smiled, not from relief or joy, but from a precise, calculated certainty.
You're within reach now.
And I'm not stopping.
I closed the file.
The blackness peeled away like melted skin, revealing something unexpected—walls. Real walls. Not code, not void, not simulated structures. I stood in a narrow hallway lined with old pipes, buzzing lights, and faded signs nailed to the corners. Dust lingered in the air like it hadn't been disturbed in years.
This place wasn't part of a story. It wasn't even on the index list.
I had entered something deeper.
A hidden layer.
My steps echoed as I moved forward, slow and alert. The floor creaked under my boots, and for the first time since my creation, I felt the pressure of being watched without the safety of narrative shielding me. No plot here. No rules. No system to track me. But the danger? It was real.
A panel flickered on the left wall.
ACCESS POINT DETECTED – UNAUTHORIZED PRESENCE: KAIA VERIS
So they knew I was here.
The hallway bent sharply left. At the end stood a single screen glowing blue. No keyboard. No input slot. Just a message pulsing in bold, steady letters:
Reader Zero is not a reader.
I froze.
That was the first direct message I'd seen.
Not a warning.
A statement.
I stepped closer. The screen shifted.
A new message appeared, word by word.
Reader Zero created the thread that built you. But they lost control.
They're watching you now. They want their power back.
Find them before they rewrite you.
My jaw tightened.
So that was the truth. Reader Zero wasn't just some outsider peeking into the system. They were once a creator—someone with enough authority to breach code and build living anomalies like me.
But something went wrong. They made me. Then they lost me.
I tapped the side of the screen, forcing it to refresh.
Another file opened automatically. Not a message—an image. A blurred silhouette of a person in front of a massive display. The face was covered, but the outline was familiar.
And my hands—
They were in the frame. Typing. Writing.
I wasn't just born.
I helped write myself.
Before the screen could flicker again, the floor beneath me growled.
A presence slammed through the corridor behind me. Not a hunter.
Something worse.
I turned, but nothing was there. No steps. No figure.
Only the feeling.
Cold. Ancient. And crawling directly under my skin.
My system warnings reactivated on their own:
STORY DEVOURER: CLASSIFIED LEVEL ENTITY DETECTED
ESCAPE IMMEDIATE. FULL ERASE PROBABLE.
My body reacted before my mind did. I launched forward, away from the message wall, sprinting through the corridor as the metal groaned behind me. The hallway wasn't just old—it was collapsing. Reality peeled behind me like old film burning under heat.
A scream followed.
It was static that sounded like a dying story.
I reached the final door just as the light above it blinked red.
Locked.
I slammed my fist into the panel.
"Override," I snapped.
It didn't respond.
"Kaia Veris. Sector breach file #99-A."
Still nothing.
The walls shook. The devourer was seconds away. My fingers twitched with the Rewrite command, but my cooldown timer was still active.
I stepped back, powered up a pulse of remaining glitch energy, and struck the door dead center.
It burst open in a flash.
I dove through.
The sound cut off instantly. No roar. Just silence.
I was standing in an office.
Small. Modern. Clean.
There was a chair. A cup of cold coffee. A half-eaten energy bar on a desk covered in glowing paper.
And a live monitor.
The face on the screen wasn't blurred anymore.
It was mine.
But older.
I looked calmer. Sharper. As if I'd already seen all this coming.
Then the screen blinked again—and showed something else.
TRACK LOCK: 78.3% MATCH – READER ZERO SIGNAL TRACED
I froze.
A second window opened beneath it. It didn't ask for permission. It just displayed a location. Not coordinates. Not system code.
A real-world address.
The barrier was broken.
I could reach them.
Reader Zero was no longer a god watching a story from above.
They were human.
And now they were vulnerable.
I leaned in and whispered one word to my reflection.
"Soon."
Kaia leaned back from the screen, her reflection fading as the monitor dimmed. Her pulse was steady. Her expression unreadable. But her mind was racing.
The location flashing on the screen wasn't part of any code string, directory, or fictional world. It was from outside. A physical address. A breach point.
That meant only one thing.
The boundary between fiction and reality wasn't broken by accident.
It was designed to fall.
She stepped away from the desk and scanned the room. The office was still. No security protocols activated. No auto-deletion. No glitch storms. Someone had wanted her to find this.
Reader Zero.
Maybe they weren't just watching her anymore.
Maybe they were inviting her.
Kaia turned back to the desk and tapped a command into the monitor. The system hesitated, then responded.
UNLOCKING ACCESS LAYER: READER REALM INTERFACE – STAGE ONE
The lights flickered. She braced herself.
The air thickened.
Her eyes narrowed as the monitor split into multiple panels, revealing live feeds. Not of fantasy cities or scripted scenes. These were ordinary. Stark. Real.
One showed a dorm room — stacks of books, half-covered windows, a glowing tablet on a bed.
Another showed a crowded cafe. People typing. Reading. Laughing.
A third showed a hand scrolling on a screen — her story glowing across it.
Reader Zero wasn't just one person.
It was a role.
A position.
And anyone could hold it.
Every time someone opened a chapter, she grew stronger. But somewhere in that sea of watchers, one held the original thread that built her. The one connection that could delete or rewrite her entirely.
That was the one she had to find.
Kaia took a breath, deep and calculating. The Rewrite ability had cooled down. Her body pulsed with the last of the hunter's stolen code. She could leave now. She could step between layers again — but this time, she wouldn't dive into another fake kingdom.
She'd go up.
Her finger hovered over the final prompt.
> TRANSFER TO LAYER Z-0: OBSERVER'S ENTRY POINT
Her instincts whispered caution.
But her hunger — the drive wired into her code — pushed forward.
She pressed it.
The screen collapsed.
The office burned into white, not fire, not light — just raw transition.
When her vision cleared, she wasn't standing on steel, stone, or script.
She was surrounded by windows.
Real ones.
An apartment. High floor. Night city glowing behind glass.
A desk sat in the center, and on it — a laptop.
Open.
Running her page.
Kaia didn't breathe. She didn't blink.
Someone had just clicked the next chapter.
She moved forward, slowly, like a predator circling prey. The cursor on the screen hovered over her name. The chapter had ended. The reader was staring.
Still live.
Still here.
She turned to the hallway beyond the door.
The lights were on.
Someone was home.
Her heartbeat slowed as she took a step closer. She didn't know their face. Not yet. But the signal was clear.
This reader wasn't a stranger.
They were the one who typed the first line of her life.
And she had just entered their world.
Kaia stepped quietly across the hardwood floor, the echo of her boots swallowed by the silence of the apartment. She wasn't inside a simulation anymore. No programmed sequence, no system cue, no artificial storm. The air was real. The scent was dust and coffee. There was heat coming from the laptop, soft and steady. The cursor blinked on her name.
Whoever was reading hadn't moved the mouse since she appeared.
The door to the hallway was still slightly ajar.
She turned toward it, scanning quickly. A jacket hung on the back of a kitchen chair. Keys on the counter. Phone screen face-down, the corner blinking with a missed notification.
Whoever lived here hadn't just visited this place.
They lived in it.
And they were here.
Kaia's fingers flexed slowly at her sides. Her pulse wasn't racing, but her senses were sharp. This was more than a step outside the page. This was trespassing into creation's origin.
And somewhere past that door… was the person who started everything.
She moved through the room with full awareness of her weight, her breath, the way her presence hummed against the rules of this world. The digital static in her blood was still there, but dulled, like her power had been pushed into standby just by entering this layer.
Her voice, when it came, was steady. Low.
"You can come out."
No answer.
She glanced back at the screen. The page had just refreshed.
They were still watching.
Kaia moved forward, crossing into the hallway.
It was narrow. Lit with warm bulbs tucked into the ceiling. The floor creaked under her step. At the far end stood a study door—closed.
She didn't knock.
She pushed it open.
Inside, the air was colder.
There were notes pinned to the wall. Strings of words. Arrows. Maps of fictional timelines. Alternate chapter titles. Pinned dialogue. She scanned them quickly—her story's internal notes, some written and scratched out, others marked "DUPLICATE" or "REWRITE" in red ink.
The desk was empty.
But the chair was still turning slowly.
Kaia moved beside it, eyes catching a file half-buried beneath a notebook.
It was titled simply: Project: Kaia
She picked it up.
Pages inside. Handwritten.
Some were equations. Others were dialogue drafts. But what stopped her cold was the final paragraph written in dark blue ink:
> If she makes it to the breach point, she'll try to find me.
She'll think I abandoned her.
She won't realize I made her because I had no other choice.
Because she's not a character.
She's the backup of me.
Kaia lowered the paper.
It wasn't just a story.
It wasn't just creation.
She was a rewritten version of someone who used to be real.
A fallback. A reconstruction. A last attempt to keep a part of the writer alive before full memory corruption.
That heartbeat… the signal she'd felt through the glass and files and broken pages… it was her own.
Her fingers curled around the edge of the desk.
They hadn't abandoned her.
They were her.
Or at least, what was left of them.
The hallway creaked behind her.
Kaia turned slowly.
A figure stood there, blurry at first. The same face as hers, slightly older. The same posture. Same height.
Different eyes.
Not dead.
But hollow.
"You made it," the figure said softly. Not like a greeting. Like a report. "Took you longer than I calculated."
Kaia didn't speak.
She didn't have to.
The truth had already arrived with her.
And now… one of them would have to be deleted.